


A Host in Strange Lands

by Natashasolten



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-11 00:01:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3308117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Natashasolten/pseuds/Natashasolten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had become tipsy on the beer tonight, but nothing like this feeling of being so drunk, so flustered, so Danny-inebriated. In his SEAL unit they’d called it “three sheets to the wind” or “half seas over.” In Five-0 headquarters, their friends had teased them but not with innuendos; they simply called it “love.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Host in Strange Lands

**Author's Note:**

> For interested parties, my pro m/m romances on Amazon are under the name Wendy Rathbone.

 

Danny slept with a perpetually frustrated look on his face.

Steve watched him as the sea wind wove saltily through the room, nestling temporarily on the white bed pillows. They had left one window open in the night, falling asleep to the soft noise of the shushing Pacific. It was a sound like the thrum of hearts, the blood’s cascade. Normally a person wouldn’t hear their own blood rush unless they were hyper-aware. Unless they were in love. But Steve had heard it, both his and Danny’s… several times last night drowning out even the Hawaiian tides.

Now, in the early dim morning, Steve heard so much more: the breeze tapping the curtain strings against the wall, the outside licking of waves on sand, Danny breathing slow and steady, warm against his side.

Steve sat up and the white sheet fell along his sun-tanned thighs. The moon had long set. Dawn seeped around the corners of the house in a green-edged pink shimmer. The low light cast Danny’s bare shoulders in a dark rose tint, his hair in tarnished bronze.

A wisp of rain scented the air.

He reached out and lightly skimmed his fingertips over the side of Danny’s head, barely touching the soft hair. Danny did not wake.

He looked down at himself, his own body dark against the snowy sheets. He rubbed the edge of his palm against his stomach, remembering Danny’s hand there, the heat of it, how it had made absent, circling caresses driving him crazy.

Ah, last night…

Was it too much beer? Or not enough?

Steve had had friends for dinner, as he often did at least once a week. Chin. Kono. And a couple friends they had brought. And Danny and Grace. Later, Rachel had dropped by to pick up Grace. It was not difficult for Steve to observe that her presence always left a sad light in Danny’s impossibly blue eyes. Those eyes, their glimmer after Gracie left, after Kono and Chin said their goodbyes, made Steve’s stomach jump in empathy, sympathy, or maybe something else.

Yeah. Something else. It felt like panic. But it wasn’t that, not exactly, when Danny turned to look at him in the silence of the living room and said, as if holding back the world’s biggest sigh, “Hey, pal, one more beer?”

It felt like panic, but it was more relief. And pleasure in resolute companionship that lingered to expand an evening he was not ready to be done with yet.

Danny followed him into the kitchen, saying in a strange, soft voice, “Why does the beer always taste better at your place?”

“Huh?” Steve wasn’t sure he’d heard him correctly.

“You know. Food is always better at somebody else’s house, when somebody else cooks.”

“Ah, I thought for a moment you were paying me a compliment.”

Danny looked up as Steve handed him a Longboard, the brown bottle flecking coppery in the light. “Maybe.” A smile softened the roundness of his lonely eyes and Steve had a momentary thought that maybe the emptiness in that gaze was being filled up just a little by their companionship. He hoped.

They’d gotten closer over time, never speaking of it but hanging out together in off hours quite a bit. Steve liked Danny’s company, and kept an invitation open to him, which included Grace, at his house. Danny was welcome any time. For any reason. Danny even had his own key.

Steve grinned. “Well, I do cook a mean steak on the grill.”

Danny opened his beer, taking a sip. “That you do,” he said.

“And the sea air… that always helps things taste better.”

“Well, your backyard is basically an ocean; it’s bound to put a seasoning tang in things.”

They took their beers to the beach, ending up walking on dunes lit by the quarter-moon. It dipped its hook on the western sky, a dim lure, as the sea shoved against itself.

“Like walking inside a postcard picture,” Danny murmured, kicking at loose sand with his shoe.

All the stars had decided to glisten this evening, so many they made a mist upon the void and to Steve it seemed he and Danny were snared in neverending spacelight which fell from sky to sea to glittering shore.

The ocean was not as black as the sky tonight. It folded upon itself in bends of phosphor green and occasional caps of white. The waves zoomed along a far jetty, but by Steve’s place they were, for now, calm.

Slowly, they wandered to the edge of the water.

They shouldn’t be walking in shoes, Steve thought. They were missing out on the night-beach’s softness, and on the slicker, silken areas where the ocean left its foam to seep deep into the silt.

Steve was the first to do anything about that. He stopped and hopped on one foot while he took off first one shoe, then the other, all artfully balancing his beer. He looped the laces through his belt, then looked up to see Danny watching him, head tilted.

“The water’s warm,” Steve commented.

In ten seconds, Danny had his shoes off and looped as well, though he handed Steve his beer first. And on they went down the beach, letting the oncoming tide tease their ankles.

They spoke softly, mostly about work. Small comments. Nothing important. Then Danny said, “I guess we should turn back. I’m going into the office early tomorrow.”

“Why? Tomorrow’s Saturday.”

“Well, Grace has plans with her mom. I’ve got nothing else to do and you know me, I like to keep busy.”

“I guess I chose right when I stole you from HPD.”

“What? You wanted a workaholic?”

Steve smirked. “It’s cheaper for me if you do the work of three men.”

“Maybe I should be paid for the work of three men.”

“Maybe you should. But the budget…”

Danny interrupted. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know. But I also know you have a lot of expenses, Grace and… you know. I wish I could pay you more.”

Danny looked at him sideways. “Really?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Even with all the bitching you put up with from me?”

Steve laughed. It felt good, the air coming into his throat, pushing out in spurts. “Yeah.” Secretly, he loved Danny’s bitching. Most of the time. The job involved a lot of drama and tension. Danny’s little rants should have added to that, but instead they helped deflate the pressure.

“I don’t think I ever asked you… Do you like the job?” Steve asked.

“That’s a strange question after… after two years and some.”

“Well, a lot of people might say ‘It’s what I know’ or ‘What I do’. But do you like it? Really?”

Danny cleared his throat. “It’s what I know.” He grinned at Steve and his teeth gleamed in the starlight. “Nah. I like it all right. Never a dull day, right? I don’t mind the danger for myself, but I gotta think of Grace, too. So I worry. But you know what makes the biggest difference?”

“What?”

“The team. We’ve got a good one. When you work with good people it’s nice. It’s rarer than people might think, finding a good fit with others especially on a job like this one.”

“That’s why I hand-picked the team.”

“Well, you have good instincts.”

“Finally.”

“What?”

“A compliment.”

“Was it? It was an observation, I think.”

“No. I’m sure it was a compliment.” Steve was grinning again as he spoke. He upended his beer bottle and drained it. Then he stuck it, neck first, in the back pocket of his pants. His head spun a little. But it wasn’t the beer. He put an arm over Danny’s shoulders, turning him back toward the jetty. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go back to the house so you can leave so you can get up early and go do some work that nobody requires right now but that you seem to want to do anyway.”

Danny did not flinch at the touch. He was a guy who was comfortable with touch, more than Steve, in fact. Instead of pulling away, Danny moved slightly into the embrace and said, “Kicking me out, then?”

Steve shrugged, liking the feel of Danny’s back muscles against the underside of his arm. A warmth radiated there, steady, natural.

“Got someone else coming over?” Danny asked.

“No.”

Danny stopped and was quiet for a moment. Steve stopped with him, arm still relaxed over his shoulders. Danny took his beer and dumped the remainder of it all along the sand. “Can’t finish this if I’m gonna be driving.”

“Wait. Dammit. Now that was a waste.” Steve watched the trickle of waves take away the bottle’s contents.

“Should I have offered it to you?”

“No. I meant that I was about to offer you a bed. You don’t have to leave. And you can get up any time you like as long as you aren’t too loud and wake me. I like to sleep in on Saturdays, you know.”

“Sleeping in? What’s that?” He bumped against Steve.

“It’s when you look at the clock and it says 6 A.M. and you turn over, pull the pillow over your head and say fuck you to the sunrise.”

“Wow. Sounds unruly, like breaking down doors without a warrant, not following the rules. Nah, you wouldn’t do anything like that. Not you.” He chuckled.

The beach smelled of brine and new-blooming nuapaka. The stars above were thick as the packed sand upon which they walked.

Steve had allowed his hand to linger on Danny, his palm resting gentle on the hard center of his back.

Danny said, “There are times I still can’t believe I’m really here.”

“And not in New Jersey?”

“I thought I’d live there my whole life. Hawaii… Oahu wasn’t even a dream.”

“And now?”

“Now what? What do I dream?”

“Yeah. That.”

“I dunno. Colors. Shades of light. I don’t always remember my dreams.”

For a brief moment Steve saw those dream colors surrounding Danny in a flickering aura. The gold fires of Pele. The blue waters of Kamapua’a. Blossoms of hothouse scarlet. Jungle green. As if the island and its spirits had netted him. Danny had fought his displacement at first, complaining, untrusting, a stranger in a strange land. Now the tropical air wove around him with less tension, and within it Danny was just… beautiful.

Something turned and fell in Steve’s chest.

What had brought them here? Now? Into Danny’s description of a picture postcard?

Fate, maybe. Or random accident. It hardly mattered.

When they got to the house, Danny turned around on the threshold of the open back door. Starlight lingered in his pale hair. He gave Steve a close-mouthed smile that tilted his lips to the left, a smile that communicated in an instant so many unspoken things between them. He came into the kitchen putting his empty beer bottle next to Steve’s on the counter, unhooking his shoes from his belt and settling them next to Steve’s on the floor. Cheeks a little pink, he said in an almost whisper, “Tell me something you’ve never told anyone else.”

“You think I have secrets?” Steve asked.

“Everyone does.”

Steve took a deep breath. He could whisper to Danny about undercover jobs or top secret S.E.A.L. missions and be assured Danny would never tell another soul, but right now between them none of that mattered. That wasn’t what Danny was talking about. This was about more than work. The secret had to be about a personal thing. A timid secret that hid in palm tree shadows and distanced itself in sunset red skies.

Steve closed his eyes, opened them. “You first.”

Danny’s smile left creases at the sides of his mouth. He replied, “There is nowhere I have ever felt I truly belonged.”

Frowning slightly, Steve said, “Not even your beloved New Jersey?”

“Not even,” came the answer.

Steve knew details all about Rachel, the divorce, Danny’s loyal fatherly love for Grace that was all but limitless. He knew how it felt to be far from home, displaced, as if the island that was the self harbored walls so high nothing could breach them. But now he knew a little more about the honest distance he saw every day in Danny’s eyes.

After a few seconds, Steve said, “I think maybe everyone feels that way sometimes.”

Danny shrugged, looking away. “Your turn.”

Steve took a deep breath, clasped his hands, stared at them for a moment, then looked straight into those reliant blue eyes. “I want… I want you to come up with me.” He paused, then added, “To bed.”

“Your bed?”

Steve nodded, glanced away, then back and forth across Danny’s face, to his chest, and up again.

“That’s your secret?”

Another nod. More glancing.

Steve finally found his voice again. “It’s okay if you say…”

“Shh!” Danny held up his hand. “It’s just not that much of a secret, you know… the things people have said, comments about us, jokes.”

Thinking the moment might be slipping from him, Steve thrust his hands deep in his pockets.

Danny said, voice firm. “Steven.  What… I mean, I don’t know how to say this but… like friends with benefits, sorta?” He inhaled loudly. “’Cause I don’t do that sorta thing. You know.”

Steve hunched his shoulders up and withdrew a little more. “I don’t even know what that means.” But of course he lied. He knew Danny would never bring up Catherine. He was too polite, well-trained, despite his penchant for rants. When it mattered, Danny was never glib.

“We both know you do. And now I just told you another one of my deepest secrets. So it can’t be just about the… benefits.”

Steve watched him, eyes heating quite suddenly. He wanted him. And Danny… was Danny saying the same in return? Because of course it could never be only about the “benefits” between them.

With Catherine, Steve had good times. She was a also confidant of sorts, but he didn’t crave her. Not like he craved Danny’s company, his voice, his smell. Simply, he wanted to keep Danny in every way, have him close, sleep in each others heat, breathe each other’s breaths. He wanted to know the colors of Danny’s dreams for himself, to be _in_ those dreams. “I know.”

Danny took a few deep breaths, blinking more than usual. He reached out in one smooth gesture, touching Steve’s cheek with the back of his hand. It was Danny who moved forward, lifted upon his toes and, as Steve leaned his head down, touched their foreheads together.

Steve’s hand rose to rest on Danny’s waist. Then he moved his head to capture Danny’s mouth as trickles of pleasure fluttered all over his body. Danny’s lips flexed, and the kiss deepened.

Steve saw a gold light in his mind and drew Danny closer.

He barely remembered how they got to the stairs, him leading with Danny’s hand clasped firmly in his, Danny close as summer at his back.

He couldn’t think. Didn’t want to think. Thinking might shipwreck the entire scene. He wanted the haze, the fog, the ecstasy that was Danny.

They didn’t seem to notice their clothes were still on, or that their feet were still a little sandy from their walk. Steve simply pulled Danny into his room and to the neatly made bed. Danny followed him willingly down to the mattress, reclining easily beside him as their arms went around each other.

They fit as if their limbs and torsos knew exactly where to go.

He wanted nothing but the feel of Danny against him. That jumping fire, that tanned heat. The fervor. The lightning. That was what he craved that Danny had.

How could the entire world not see it? Aloud, he wondered, “How is it that you don’t have the whole world at your door offering propositions all the time?”

“Who says I don’t?” Danny grinned into their deepest kiss yet. Steve fell back as Danny rolled on top.

“But you,” Danny said a bit later, bent low to Steve’s ear, “you’re the beautiful one.”

Women had called him that once or twice, but never a man. Now it was Danny, whispering soft, pulling off his shirt and rubbing circles on his belly with the palm of his hand.

The deep brown shadows of the room quietly watched, motionless in their appraisal.

Steve had his hand in Danny’s hair. What was happening to his heart? The pounding of it came on stronger than the surf beyond the windows and walls that now barely contained this new, unmeasured power.

There was an interval where Danny made them stop and fold back the covers of Steve’s bed. In those seconds, Danny shucked his pants and crawled naked between the cool, white sheets. He was a dark, tan figure against all that billowy whiteness, utterly compelling.

Steve left a window open so the sea-breeze could play a little, too, cool against their flushed, hot skin, tranquil, halcyon.

He could see Danny so ready for him, on his side facing him, body compact and wine-gold and gleaming, arm lifted to hold the sheet up for him. He slipped right into the space next to him, the coolness of the bed on his hip, the flame of Danny, alert and aroused, meeting him in the middle.

The evening grew late and emerald and dark.

“Love is the host in strange lands,” Steve heard himself murmur. Where had that come from? Something he’d memorized long ago. And now, a delayed response to Danny’s admission of never feeling as if he belonged.

“What?” Danny asked, arms going around him.

“A Hawaiian proverb.”

“I don’t care about that. What it means, though… Did you just tell me you love me?”

Steve growled in answer and ducked his head to leave a circle of moisture with his tongue around Danny’s bellybutton.

The sea wind muttered softly through the window and about the room.

Steve said, “You can’t be alone anymore. I won’t let you.”

Danny squirmed, slippery now, moving over him again.

The stars fell in a mist on the roof. Steve could hear them sizzle.

He had become tipsy on the beer tonight, but nothing like this feeling of being so drunk, so flustered, so Danny-inebriated. In his SEAL unit they’d called it “three sheets to the wind” or “half seas over.”

In Five-0 headquarters, their friends had teased them but not with innuendos; they simply called it “love.”

It was something everyone else seemed able to see between them. But not Steve. Not Danny. What had taken them so long? Male bravado? Censors? Filters? The fact that they were both male?

None of that should have mattered. The heart wants what the heart wants. He’d heard it too many times to count. But until now, Steve hadn’t quite realized how closed his heart had been until Danny came into his life.

Steve had lived his whole life in places that weren’t really his own. Military barracks or condos. His father’s house. And now Danny and his secret that he’d never belonged, never really had a home, not even with Rachel, was revealed. And yet that was what he seemed to want most. A home. _I don’t even know how to make my own home, not really,_ he thought. “But I can be your hearth,” he said.

“What are you mumbling?” Danny asked, laughing lightly against his shoulder.

“Don’t stop,” Steve said.

He couldn’t bear to not be kissing him. Not right now. Slowly he turned him in the sheets so that Danny was lying on his back. He ran his hands over the compact, silken skin, feeling the light blond hairs at his chest, kissing his way past them. He caressed Danny’s hips and stomach. His fingers edged into the short golden curls of his pubic hair as he nipped at Danny’s stomach, licking.

Danny yelled a little, bucked.

“Lie still!” His grin softened the firmness of his words, making Danny laugh.

When, he wondered, did Danny _ever_ obey him? He came up from the sheets, grabbing Steve about the shoulders, forcing him into more passionate kissing, mouth on mouth. _And, okay,_ Steve thought, _I could come from just this. Just this._

They fell back onto the bed. Steve’s hands went all over Danny’s back, down as far as he could get them, cupping firm, smooth flesh, wanting more.

Danny mumbled, “Please do not let the world end now.”

“What?”

Breathing onto his cheek, pressing his jaw there, rubbing, Danny said, “I always think when something good is about to happen to me, the world will end before I can get there.”

Steve let his laugh tumble over them and pushed Danny once again onto his back. “I’ll get you there.” His fingers stroked down, across the flat stomach, tickling the thighs.

Danny whispered, “I’m already there, Steven. No matter what.”

The words sent Steve’s mind awhirl. He hadn’t known it could be like this. Or he would’ve certainly jumped him sooner. The way his skin tingled, how the blood rushed, the melding of their bodies, their thoughts, for once, on the same wavelength. Their voices might argue; their bodies did not. Yearning, moist, hard. Craving. Trusting.

Steve used one hand planted firmly in the center of Danny’s chest to hold him back, and placed a lingering, damp kiss right at the curve of the hipbone. His free hand caressed Danny’s stomach, then down the side of his thigh, then slowly up the inside. His mouth trailed just below the navel, tongue tasting, chin bumping long, hard heat, trapped power. His mouth found that heat; his tongue licked and found all of it immensely interesting.

Danny tried but couldn’t lie completely still. His legs bent at the knee, straightened, then bent again.

Steve kissed, on and on. Deeply. Reverently suckling on straining tautness. Such arousal made him terribly happy. The amazing tastes, the textures.

Danny squirmed, groaned. His breaths came heavy and long. He lost control somewhere between the exclamation, “Oh my…” and “…god.” His hips bucked. His legs went taut. His arms crossed over his face as if he were weeping uncontrollably, or laughing.

Steve made sure he was completely depleted before he came up and pulled Danny into another long kiss.

The depletion did not last. Steve could see that Danny stayed half-hard as he explored Steve’s body with hot palms and excited breath. There was a short time when he thought he could relax and enjoy it, but that didn’t last. He could enjoy, but relaxing was out of the question. Danny’s mouth went everywhere, and found the sweetest spots. Then before he knew it, Steve was bucking past Danny’s lips, coming hard.

They did that with each other two more times during the night before finally falling asleep in a tangle of arms and legs, their breaths mingled, brown hair mixed with gold on the white pillow.

He slept thinking only of Danny, surrounded by Danny. He dreamed in colors: vermillion, azure-eyed skies, hot orange, royal lavender, colors he decided were Danny’s hues. Danny’s shades in dream.

Now awake again, he sat in the coppery gloss of pre-dawn, staring at the sleeping man beside him. Danny’s closed eyelids pressed tight. His forehead was creased, the lines of his mouth turned down. Steve wanted to coax the still-persistent frustration from him, smooth the lines of his face with gentle hands. He wanted to be sure, always, that Danny was content, cared for.

But would Danny let him? Danny with his fierce but often lost eyes, his loyal, fatherly smile, his stubborn independence living in an apartment still, after two years, two-thirds unpacked?

He looked at him and felt the heat in his belly again, his entire self wanting to reach out but still a bit afraid. Danny was proud even when he slumped, even when he gave in.

Though Danny had clearly communicated “I don’t do casual” Steve’s mind faltered, still wondered if it was all okay, if Danny really wanted to enter this fiery season with him, hand in hand. The fear came only because Steve so desperately didn’t want to lose this now, and go to work with half a heart.

But that scrunched, sleeping face…it looked so forlorn. And always, always there would still be Danny’s quick retorts, his unease with so many situations he could not help but obsessively, constantly assess. That trait in Danny made Steve unsure.

Danny was the master of written reports. Explaining. Critiquing. Justifying everything Five-0 did to solve the case and save the day. But away from the office, would it continue to be like that?

Steve wanted to do everything for him, do better. But if called to, he knew he’d still threaten perps with sharks, kick in doors, jump off walls. Drive fast.

 _I had no choice_ , Steve heard himself saying in his imagined scenario, running in without back up, responding with instinct over rational thought.  It happened often. Would happen again and again. And Danny would still get upset, still be there to shake his head at him, turn away, mutter, argue, sigh.

If Danny turned away from him now, Steve knew he could dive into the deepest cold sea and still feel Danny’s heat. There was no escaping that that might be the one thing to break him, this one night of melting thigh against thigh, chest to chest, that scorch now permanently tattooed on his memory of flesh pressed to flesh, insistent, unguarded, taut.

Steve inhaled sharply.

Danny stirred, eyes slowly opening.

The blink, the focus, and he came abruptly up on one elbow, a curl of bright hair over his left eye.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” Steve met his gaze.

“You okay?”

“Are you?”

“Why would I not be okay? I’m here with you.”

It was the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to him.

“I’m good, too,” Steve said.

“You better be.” Danny rubbed absently at his face and said, “Come here, then.” He held out his arms. Steve sank down at his side and let Danny pull him to him.

Hard edge to hard edge, silken, sliding. They came together in a burning embrace.

Steve clung, amazed.

Danny said, against his mouth, the words moist and arousing, “Damn, Steve. What you do to me.” He kissed him sweet, with a kind of mad generosity that gave all his heart, pulled back and added, “We are so sleeping in this morning, right?”

With that kind of kiss, and those kinds of words, Steve wondered how he could ever have doubted this.

“That had always been my plan,” Steve replied, intending to remain lost in Danny all morning long and throughout the golden Hawaiian Saturday.

 

 

                                                                                 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this story, you may enjoy my "tropical" male/male romance trilogy under my non-fanfic name: Wendy Rathbone. "The Foundling" trilogy includes: The Foundling, None Can Hold the Dark and The Lostling: Alec's Story. They are available on Amazon at very very low prices. Click [here](https://www.amazon.com/Wendy-Rathbone/e/B00B0O9BMS/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1) to go to my author page.
> 
> Click [here](http://eepurl.com/cqDVcX) to subscribe to my awesome (but not very frequent so you won't be spammed) newsletter.
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> Thanks for reading!


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